❉ ❉  WEBSITE ORDERS PROCESSING NOW PAUSED ❉ ❉

Please note that orders for physical items (printed books and CDs) placed via our website will now not be processed or dispatched until 6 January 2025. Ebooks and Playscript Subscriptions remain available.

Click here for more information.

Playing the Mask
Imprint: Nick Hern Books
Paperback, 328 pages ISBN: 9781854595805Publication Date:
19 Oct 2017
Size: 216mm x 138mm£12.99 £10.39You save £2.60 (20%)
Ebook, 328 pages ISBN: 9781780019680Publication Date:
19 Oct 2017
£12.99 £10.39You save £2.60 (20%)

Playing the Mask

Acting Without Bullshit

By John Wright

Paperback £12.99£10.39

Ebook £12.99£10.39

In Playing the Mask, award-winning theatre-maker and teacher John Wright explores and demystifies mask-work: what masks do, how they do it, and, above all, what they can teach us about acting.

This book is a wonderfully accessible introduction to a fresh and innovative acting technique for actors, theatre-makers and teachers to use in training and rehearsal. A mask releases the actor to be playful, and playfulness generates ideas, finds meaning, develops characterisation – and is infinitely more fun than traditional training.

Rather than a dry guide to making masked theatre, it is about, for instance, playing Lady Macbeth in Red Nose, or Hamlet in the mask of The Victim, The Ogre or The Fool, or even Romeo and Juliet in grotesque half-masks… All in the name of liberating your creativity and, ultimately, improving your performance.

Extensively illustrated with a rich variety of masks, this inventive and pragmatic book is full of invaluable games and exercises drawn from the author's own workshops, his experience as co-founder of both Trestle and Told by an Idiot, and his pioneering mask and clown work in many professional productions.

'Brilliant, entertaining and accessible' Paul Hunter, from his Foreword

Blog post: 'I first became interested in mask-work in the early seventies when I realised that there must be more to acting than watching people sitting around, talking to each other and behaving as if they were on television.' John Wright on discovering the potential of masks. Read on >>

‘Masks are empowering… They enable you to take risks. They provoke you into working with the reckless logic of a six-year-old or the enigmatic stillness of someone wiser than you’ll ever be. But above all, masks let you be you without your habitual limitations.’

Press Quotes

'Wright brings his teaching alive through an anarchic sense of humour and colourful storytelling, highlighting his wide experience and understanding of theatre… highly enjoyable as well as instructive'

Drama Resource

'Provocative and playful… the example exercises are invaluable references… [Wright's insights] feel fresh and welcome in both the rehearsal room and drama school training'

Drama Magazine

'For a teacher wishing to find inventive new levels for teaching the craft of acting, this could be the answer... offers an innovative set of techniques for rehearsal and generates many useful ideas'

Word Matters (Journal of the Society of Teachers of Speech and Drama)
Imprint: Nick Hern Books
Paperback,328 pages ISBN: 9781854595805Publication Date:
19 Oct 2017
Size: 216mm x 138mm£12.99 £10.39You save £2.60 (20%)
Ebook,328 pages ISBN: 9781780019680Publication Date:
19 Oct 2017
£12.99 £10.39You save £2.60 (20%)

Also by John Wright:

Why Is That So Funny?

Go to author page...

Similar Titles
A practical guide to the skills, characters and history of Commedia Dell'Arte through graded games and illustrated ex...
A step-by-step guide to Physical Theatre in both theory and practice - full of detailed exercises and inspiring ideas...
A practical investigation of how comedy works, by a well-respected practitioner and teacher. With a Foreword by Toby...
A revised and updated edition of Declan Donnellan's bestselling book, a fresh and radical approach to acting by a wor...
A top-ranking director sets out his rehearsal techniques in this invaluable handbook for actors and directors.
A practical, accessible and inspiring guide to using puppetry in theatre, by a leading expert in the field.